DaChan Food (Asia), one of the largest suppliers in China to the KFC fast food chain, said on Friday night it lost 50 million yuan, or $8.3 million, in the first six months of the year, compared with a profit of 44.8 million yuan a year earlier as an outbreak of H7N9 bird flu hit demand for chicken meat and feed.
Business was also hurt by reports at the end of last year that industry suppliers had used excessive amounts of additives in chicken and relatively slow economic growth in China in the first half of the year, DaChan said. First-half sales at the company slid by 0.9% to 5.4 billion yuan. The financial results were unaudited, said Taiwan-based DaChan, whose shares trade at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
An outbreak of H7N9 bird flu in China in April led to billions of dollars of losses by the poultry industry, analysts have said. Some 44 people have from bird flu have died this year, mostly in eastern China, according to state media.
DaChan said China’s economy is “expected to stabilize” in the second half of the year, and the chicken breeder industry is likely to “revitalize.”
